


Disagreements

by makos_lightningrod



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Mentions of Allison's Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 20:19:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1562732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/makos_lightningrod/pseuds/makos_lightningrod
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You love me.” Lydia Martin was never speechless. Sometimes she didn’t have the words to express certain things, but she is never at a loss for any words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Disagreements

**Author's Note:**

> For Stydia Week 2014, Day 5
> 
> Previously on lydiasgotstiles.tumblr.com

Deja vu.

Same circumstances. Different emotions.

The Beacon Hills bowling alley is alive with couples and groups since there wasn’t much else to do in the small town without grumpy werewolves breaking up the black light parties. Lydia Martin is used to the scene, the people looking at her for clues as to what was hot, to see how the ‘It Couple’ is faring.

Except Jackson isn’t here. Hasn’t been for the past two years.

Instead, she finds herself there with the one boy she never thought she would be out with three years ago. But here she is, watching him from where she sits while he goes to the snack counter and waits for their food. She can’t help but roll her eyes when she sees him bopping his body to the tune of the overrated top 40s song. He’s so uninhibited and she wonder if he ever cares about what people think about him when they see him in public.

She doesn’t know why she says yes to tonight. She was all set to force Kira to come over and watch ‘The Notebook’ for the third time since their friendship blossomed. That was until she conveniently forgot that she had a hot date with Beacon Hills’ Scott McCall and texted her an hour before she was supposed to get dressed.

And she would have been damned if she got dressed and had nothing to do. Which is why she finds herself here. Watching Stiles Stilinski looking over the dispensers of sauce for his curly fries and immediately choosing honey mustard.

She can’t help but wrinkle her nose, and almost as if he has a Lydia Martin disapproval radar, Stiles looks over and grins, grabbing a new little paper cup to pump gratuitous amounts of ketchup into for her. He knows her more than he should, she feels, and she turns away quickly to stare at the polished wooden lanes.

It was unnerving, and she remembers the times before Stiles, before the pack where she could name no one that knew her so inside and out. Jackson was her boyfriend, the guy she loved, and even he only saw the parts of her she wanted.

“You’re thinking about last time, right?” Scott’s voice is in her ear, and she wants to slap him away. He was yet another boy that thought he could see inside of her, and his wolfish abilities and caring eyes always makes it hard to keep her mask in place.

“Your first date with Allison.”

She offers the words. His choice to continue on with their dark remembrance or keep up the forceful cheerfulness under florescent lights.

“I miss her just as much as you do,” he says, leaning back against the bench and watching as his girlfriend steps up to bowl her turn. She gets a strike and Lydia’s not surprised. She’s the most athletic girl she’s ever met and Lydia knew the moment she gained all her respect was when she scored the first goal for the lacrosse team last season.

If there was any girl she thought would be good for Scott, it’s Kira.

She watches as the two of them do double high-fives and she thinks it’s so incredibly cheesy, but she can’t help but be somewhat jealous. Not that she doesn’t have that kind of relationship with Stiles, but she wishes that she could do more and say more. And she doesn’t understand why she can’t. Nothing ever stops Lydia Martin from doing what she wants or says.

Except Stiles Stilinski.

He’s offering her his curly fries and his brown eyes look at her like she looks at an especially hard math problem. She stares at the waste of calories, finally scooping up one of the crisp potatoes to dip into the little cup of ketchup because it’s Stiles Stilinski. And even if he looks at her like he knows her inside and out, she still knows ways to surprise him. Even if she still can’t fathom how they got here.

“Your turn,” She says with a pointed look towards the empty lane. Of course, he can’t just stand up and set the fries down on the bench. He spills one out of the carton, and somehow gets a dab of honey mustard on his wrist.

He’s clumsy and comedic, and sometimes too smart for his own good.  
But Lydia Martin will never admit that the way he lifts his pale, freckled wrist to his lips is sexy. Not even with the cat-like lap of his tongue against flesh.

Stiles Stilinski is not sexy.

He’s has no tact and has an awful habit of flailing and throwing his body about like he’s a marionette puppet. But she watches as he dusts his oily fingers off and picks up his ball - bright green, which again, doesn’t surprise her. She always thought green was his color. She flushes to herself and looks away, noticing how Kira and Scott are watching her and she wills her blush away, but it fails her and she just whips around to concentrate on anything else but the way that she’s noticing Stiles.

He steps up to the edge of the lane and throws the ball, only knocking down a few pins. She can’t help but laugh to herself since she knows he isn’t the most coordinated person by far. He goes to pick up his ball as it comes back up and Lydia Martin finds herself getting up and walking toward him against her will.

“You can’t just throw it like it’s a baseball,” she says as she nudges at his sharp hipbone with her hand, trying to push him into position without actually having to linger in any way shape or form. She didn’t want to give him in type of encouragement in his ten year plan, even if she had been secretly pleased to hear about it from Kira.

Even if his old crush had been obvious, he’s over it now. That much was apparent in the fact that he could talk to her like a normal human being and didn’t even mind trying to tell her she was wrong. Even though everyone knows Lydia Martin is always right.

“Control your body. I know, I know, that’s a foreign concept for you, but try.”

“Are you criticizing me?” He asks, turning his head to look down at her.

“Yes,” she answers without hesitation. There are some things that she would never sacrifice for the sake of her emotions. And one of them is to tell it like it is.

He chuckles and turns back to the lane. He obviously listens to her because when he rolls his ball the next time, he hits the rest of the pins. She can’t help but smile when she sees him excited. Even though she knows how good he is at lacrosse (and how good he looks in uniform), she knows that bowling is clearly not his forte and he shows his excitement when he does well.

“Awesome, now, I can count on you to hit at least a spare because we can totally cream Kira and Scott, if so. You know, for having awesome werewolf abilities, the guy still can’t bowl, even Kira’s skills can’t help him at all.” His excitement is catching, and she wants to do well because of it.

“Don’t worry. We’ll beat them.” Lydia Martin doesn’t date losers, and she doesn’t lose.

She scoops up the glittery pink ball that she always has dibs on because even if it doesn’t always match her outfit perfectly, it’s still pink and sparkles, so that’s okay. It’s simple math and a combination of having spent every other Friday night for two years in this same bowling alley that easily has her ball down the lane, dead center, sending pins flying in every direction.

Strike! Of course.

She gives herself a little internal pat on the back before walking back and sitting beside Stiles. She notices him looking at her and she tries not to look so affected by it. “What?” She asks, looking away.

“Nothing. You just never cease to amaze me,” he says simply, rubbing his temple before grinning at her. She stares at him for a long moment but it’s ruined by him stuffing his mouth with a few of the leftover curly fries. She rolls her eyes, but can’t help but smile as the four of them continue the rest of the game and the two of them inevitably take the win since Kira and Scott seem more preoccupied with each other than the actual game.

 

She finds herself in his crappy blue jeep when the four of them leave the alley. She watches as Kira climbs behind her boyfriend on his motorbike, and they drive off. She’s alone with Stiles and feels the tension in her shoulders that she wants to attribute to having to wear bowling shoes, but it isn’t. It’s because of the boy beside her that isn’t driving anywhere.

“What are you doing?” She demands lightly, already wishing she had driven herself to the alley instead of getting a ride because then she could let herself go, take off the mask and examine the reasons why she’d ever want to run her fingers through Stiles’ messy, chestnut hair.

“You love me.”

Lydia Martin was never speechless.  
Sometimes she didn’t have the words to express certain things, but she is never at a loss for any words.

“I don’t know where you got that from in the last two hours that we were bowling, but I will not respond to that statement,” she said with a serious tone, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. “Now take me home.”

She’s looking out the window and her eyes are trying desperately to betray her by glancing at him from the corner of her eye, but she barely makes him out as he stares ahead and then back at her. This time there is no smile on his face. Instead, he has that look on his face that makes her want to ask what’s wrong. He has such a puppy dog face and she wonders how anyone got through life raising him without giving him what he wanted. But then she thinks of his father and knows that he must have some weapon against such a face.

“You love me, Lydia Martin. I know your green eyes better than anyone else and I know you would never admit that I can read you like a book and I know that look. It’s the same look I gave you for almost ten years,” he explains, his voice calm as he grips the steering wheel for a moment. “And it’s the look I imagined you would always have when…God-” He runs his hand over his face. “Never mind.”

Her mask is stripped away, and if she was being honest with herself, he has been chipping it apart with every moment that he surprised her over the past two years. Now she has no defense, no quick words or easy escape, and this isn’t the same as with Jackson. That love was expected, planned. Safe.

Nothing about Stiles Stilinski was safe.

“I don’t-” She presses her lips together to keep back the lies, the truth. It wouldn’t matter because he can see it, written on her features, in the wobble of her bottom lip. They have seen each other at the worst, and it’s so much harder to reject his words when she knows that it’s probably the truth.

“You don’t look at me the same way you looked at me for those ten years,” she hedges instead. Safe bets, for now. They aren’t the nerdy boy who loved the popular girl from afar anymore. 

“That’s because I’ve had ten years to perfect my expressions,” he murmurs, a bit of that humor to break the completely unadulterated horror that she feels at being completely raw and caught off guard. “You have the look I had for the first eight of those years. And then…And then maybe you’ll look at me like how I’ve been looking at you for the last two.”

“What?” It’s a quiet word in the confined walls of his car, but she utters it and her voice wavers. She hopes that he mistakes it for the raspy voice that she always seems to have now, but he knows her too well.

“What makes you think I ever stopped looking at you?” He asks and she again, finds herself speechless in the presence of Stiles Stilinski. “How do you think I’ve been looking at you?”

She takes a moment in trying to choose her words carefully. “As a friend. Ever since..Ever since this whole werewolf business started, we’re friends. We’ve helped each other. There were more important things to worry about. Just because…Just because we had that whole emotional tether thing doesn’t mean anything now. We’ve been…best friends, Stiles.” As much as she’s surprised to admit it, it’s true.

“And that’s why it’s different. You don’t look at me the way you look at Kira, and she’s your best friend,” his energy was up, and she could tell he was getting on a roll. “And you don’t look at me like you looked at Jackson. It’s because we’re best friends, but there’s still something more! Something important. You kissed me, Lydia, and I know that it was to stop my panic attack, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t…feel something when you did it!”

His words are all exclamations and ring true, but his conclusion doesn’t fit well in her head because she didn’t decide it first. She always picks her relationships and what they mean, but Stiles has come windmilling into her life and breaking down all her barriers before she had decided she wants him there.

“You didn’t think it meant anything when it happened,” she said stubbornly. She could debate with the best, and she hates to be proven wrong. She focuses on that fact instead of pondering if what he said may be right.

Stiles shifts in his seat, his body leaning, but not overpowering her. If it had been anyone else she’d have pepper-sprayed them already, but Stiles doesn’t threaten her. It’s engaging and electric, and she wants to lean into him.

“Because I still couldn’t fathom that Lydia Martin, THE Lydia Martin would ever kiss me. And then when I realized that, it just-it took a while to process and examine, but the way you looked after…It was like…you finally saw me.”

She sits there, staring at him with what she is sure is the same expression she gives him the first time they kissed. Her eyes search his and before she can even think of what she is saying, the words come flowing out and she can’t take back a question that begs to be answered.

“Do you love me?”

Because even now, Lydia feels the desperate need to be the one receiving instead of giving. She remembers all the times she chased after Jackson and while she knew it wasn’t him the entire time, her habit of needing assurance and confirmation has stuck to her after so long.

He tilts his head and gives her a look she hasn’t seen before. But it’s because it’s a look that has never been given to her directly. He looks at her like shes completely stupid.

“I thought it was obvious.”

And even then, the words are stuck in her throat and she breaks their gaze. She exhales slowly, wondering why her heart is racing - why she can feel her blood flooding her veins in a way that she’s sure she’s suffering from varicose veins because there’s just so much and she can hear it so well. And then her breath catches in her throat.

And before she can make a sound distinguishing her disbelief, he cups his hands against her neck and tilts her head to kiss her.

Lydia Martin has been kissed before. She has been kissed by the hottest guys in the town, ones that could have been models if they wanted, and she has never felt overwhelmed. She has always been in control. But Lydia Martin has never been kissed like this before.

It’s the chastest of the kiss that gets to her, she thinks. The pressure doesn’t demand. He’s letting her decide if she wants this.

She’s the first to break the kiss and it isn’t until then that she notices that her lipgloss has smeared on his lips. She reaches up and brushes her thumb across his bottom lip, wiping it off. He catches her wrist, causing her to jump from the sudden move. “What are you-”

Her eyes widen when he picks up her hand and brushes his lips against her palm. She immediately pulls her hand away when she feels his tongue running along one of the lines of her palm. She realizes that it isn’t because she didn’t like it - it’s because it’s bold and scary. And it tickles.

“I saw you watching me eat those curly fries.” A grin breaks out on his face and the sudden tension is broken when he laughs.

She immediately relaxes and regains her composure. “As if,” she murmurs. “Why would I want my hand to smell like fries and honey mustard? God,” she huffed, moving her hand out of the dangerous proximity of his reach. “Drive me home,” she demands. And he doesn’t hesitate.

 

When they pull into her driveway, she doesn’t hesitate to open the door. “Thanks for the ride,” she tells him, trying not to leave any room for him to inexplicity tell her how she feels about him. He opens his mouth to say something, but she slams the car door shut and gives him a triumphant smile. He knows just how in denial she is. It gives him hope and she sees it in the way his dimples deepen.

She makes her way inside and goes upstairs to her bedroom, bypassing the prying questions of her mother. The door shuts behind her and she can’t help herself by going over to her window and peeking through the curtain. He’s still in the driveway, his headlights still on.

He suddenly flashes his brights and pulls out of the driveway. A moment later, she sees him at the stoplight. It’s a very long stoplight.

She takes out her cellphone and stares at it for a moment before typing the little keystrokes.

Goodnight.

She stares at the screen and it vibrates in her hand.

I love you, too. ;)

Lydia Martin can’t help but smile.


End file.
